A mini revival of Surrealism

The importance of Eugene Ysaye, the Belgian violinist who died in 1931, was as a performer for whom Debussy, and Cesar Franck and Ernest Chausson wrote lasting works.

Chimay is a piquant Trappist ale brewed in the Belgian town of that name.

The Gaede Trio is led by suave-toned Daniel Gaede, concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic.

On a clear day you can see forever does not describe Los Angeles.

Think those things Sunday afternoon, when the Gaede Trio made its local debut in a Chamber Music in Historic Sites concert, and you would have been in for a surprise. On this sparklingly clear day and in a glass-ringed house that sits on a spectacular aerie overlooking Griffith Park and has views from one snow-peaked end of Southern California to the cerulean-ocean other, the Gaede Trio (without its founder) made its local debut with a performance of Ysaye’s string trio, “Le Chimay.”

This is quite a house, the Gaede is quite an ensemble, “Le Chimay” is quite a piece, and taken together they proved not a little disorienting.

Let’s begin with the wedge-shaped house, which was designed by John Lautner for pop-top-can baron Leo Harvey in 1950 and restored to much of its original splendor by its current celebrity owners, Mitch Glazer and Kelly Lynch. What a strange sensation it is to sit in a circular room where, behind the performers, are large plate glass windows that fabulously expose downtown L.A. and listen to Mozart, Beethoven and Ysaye, music of other times and places. Perhaps you’ve gotten used to the notion of driving freeways accompanied by Haydn symphonies or Handel operas. For me, Philip Glass makes a lot more sense.

How strange, too, to encounter an intense, tuxedo-clad old-world trio in this setting. Based in Berlin, the trio -- founded in 1991 by Gaede, who retired from it this summer because of poor health -- is a sideline for symphony orchestra players. The new violinist, Stefano Mollo is with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe; violist Thomas Selditz and cellist Andreas Greger are members of Staatskapelle Berlin.

And then there is “Le Chimay,” which followed a tight reading of a Mozart transcription of an introduction and fugue from a Bach organ sonata and a strikingly dramatic one of Beethoven’s early Serenade, Opus 8. The Ysaye trio was written in 1927, never published and discovered several years ago by the Gaede in a manuscript that lacked phrasing or dynamics. Like the Harvey house, it needed restoration, and we must trust them that they were able to ferret out Ysaye’s intentions.

Given just how potent and overripe the 20-minute work sounded Sunday, that trust is easily won. Ysaye may not exactly be having a revival, but his best known (indeed his only even moderately known) works -- six solo violin sonatas -- have just had two excellent new recordings by Thomas Zehetmair on ECM and Ilya Kaler on Naxos.

“Le Chimay” might be described as French Expressionism with a bit of Surrealism thrown in. It also might be described as just plain weird. It is full of extravagant string writing, which is to be expected, but not the seemingly incompatible influences of Debussy, Franck and Schoenberg, who get along just fine here.

Agitated melodramatic passages half resolve into intoxicating lyricism. Storm clouds come and go, propelled by unpredictable breezes. Nothing ever settles for long.

The Gaede played with a fervor that held the ears prisoner, even as the eyes wandered a Southland expanse. The Da Camera Society of St. Mary’s College, as it proves again and again in this stimulating concert series, knows how to put on a show.